Santiveri is a company founded in 1885 by Jaime Santiveri Pinés
a textile commerciant, owner of a haberdashery in the Barcelona city center, saw himself affected by a pulmonary disease which, according to the medical knowledges of the time, was incurable. This difficulty took him to the world of the natural medicine and healthy nutritionism.
Jaime Santiveri Piniés was entrepreneur with a tenacity, creativity and innovative spirit hard to compete with. Advancing his own time and facing the stablished convencionalisms, he invested his time on spreading and boosting the principles of the healty alimentation and the naturist medicinal techniques that he himself had experienced, and also had saved his own life.
Being barely 25 years old, Jaime Santiveri suffers a pulmonar disease. He visits a doctor after another, but the result is always the same: there was no cure. Resignation was not part of his plan. He was too young to accept the fatality of death before moving heaven and earth. It came to his ears the existence of a center in Germany which healed many people by natural methods, including those cases calified by the medicine of the time as incurable.
It was a sanatory center, in Wörishofen, property of the abbot Sebastian Kneipp, who years ago got healed of the same pulmonar disease. Jaime spent 6 months receiving water cures, walking on open air to oxygenate his lungs, taking medicinal plants and following a nutritional therapy with an almost-vegetarian diet. He fully recovered.
MIRACLE? NO. HE GOT HEALED BY THE NATURAL TREATMENT AND THE WATER!
Abbot Sebastian Kneipp, priest and father of the modern hydrotherapy.
He was a precursor of the natural medicine and hydrotherapy in the XIX century. techniques which by the time were not used in Europe since the roman times.
His famous method is known as the Kneipp Cure.
Jaime came back, life exultant, and willing to transmit the methods to the doctors. They examined him and confirmed his healing but noone cared to know the method that had saved his life. This fact made him desperate, and from that moment he would not cease his effort to preach health care through natural methods, in order to allow other people to benefit. He started to transform his haberdashery into a natural products shop.
DO NOT MISS THIS CURIOSITY!C/ Call 20, Barcelona
A scandalous shower
WE TELL YOU A STORY WHICH REFLECTS JAIME SANTIVERI'S ENTHUSIASM TO DIVULGATE THE BENEFITS OF NATURAL CURES.
When he came back from the german spa, he brought an auto-shower, or portable shower, to ease the application at home of the cold water showers, which are very suitable both for blood circulation and hygiene.
As bold as you like, wearing his swimsuit, he went to the crowded Ramblas of Barcelona to show how easy and how advantageous it was to use this gadget. He had to run like hell after seeing the pedestrians blaming and insulting him for such an exhibisionist act.
Later on, his shop would evolve into a pharmacy, with a pharmacist in charge. Named, by the time, as Farmacia Kneipp, it would end up becoming the mother, not only of the Santivery company, but also the first natural products shop in Spain.
Call Street 22, Barcelona
Jaime Santiveri had to become a manufacturer. He transfered the haberdashery and bought land to set up a factory-laboratory. That was also going to be the first healthy food, natural complements and medicinal plants factory. However, in 1928 the land in which the factory had been settled was expropriated. Nevertheless, as a man used to grow in front of adversities, Jaime relocates the factory.
The naturist and hygienist methods started to be all the rage in all Europe, and the products manufactured by Santiveri started to gain commercial ground very quickly. As a result, the first shops and offices (the franchises of the time) were open on those moments of big expansion. These are some of them.
Santiveri & Kellogg´s Stand
Exposición universal de Barcelona, 1929
Not many people know that the famous "Corn flakes" from Kellog's crossed the Atlantic Ocean thanks to Santiveri, who also made known other products like the "brand" to combat constipation. Santiveri was its representative and dealer in Spain until the Civil War interrupted the trade relations.
In those years of the early century, where the tendencies inspired by the natural treatments gained terrain -not only in Europe-, the United States of America had its own "Kneipp" in the singular figure of Doctor John Harvey Kellogg and his spa placed in Battle Creek.
The first products that Santiveri commercialized were the same that abbot Kneipp used to use, and were imported from Germany. Those were mainly supplements to combat nutritional deficiencies, medicinal plants, vegetal broth cubes, vegetal protein preparations for vegetarians, fortified flour for children, malt and utensils to apply hydrotherapy. With the arrival of the first factory, the company would also start manufacturing products with own brands: Natura and Vigor.
...and much moreVigor Cookies
Vigor Broth Cubes
Natura Corn Cream
Natura Oat Flakes
Vigor Rice Flour
El Molino, Gofio Canario
Blood Wash
Ostrón
Vigor Dessert for diabetics
Natura Grillé
Some of the beautiful original cases and boxes from those products and their successors are still preserved.
With malt we can prepare infusions with a taste and flavour very similar to coffee. It is produced with germinated and toasted barley grains. The result is a nourishing and restorative beverage, very digestive and not exciting, also suitable for children, which Santiveri is still commercializing today.
The first product that made the Santivery Company get off the ground was malt -a coffee substitute-, very popular in the first half of the 20th century, healthier and cheaper than coffee. Jaime Santiveri imported it first from Germany, but he would end up producing himself under his brand, Natura, and offering free degustations all around Spain.
The rolling cafés were also fruit of Jaime Santiveri's restless mind, in which, at the beginning of the 20th century, he offered free malta degustations, like in nowadays Roadshows. El Águila Verde first, and La Flecha Verde after, were the lorries transformed into mobile coffe shops which roamed towns and cities, becoming a classical stamp of the prewar spanish period.
El Águila Verde was a Citroën, perfectly adapted for the itinerant trading and degustation of malt. Everything was transformable, it missed not a single detail.
Vista frontal del águila verde
Table bar
The back part of the vehicle could be transformed in the twinkling of an eye into a table bar with a shade canopy, where malt-coffee tastings were offered.
WC
Water Closet, with a toilet and a water tank which could be seen in the top back part of the vehicle.
HALL, DINING ROOM AND BEDROOM
A bed on each side with two mattresses which could transform into bunks with a 4 people capacity. When the table was folded, it became a mirror.
Office
Office a full equiped office with a typing machine and a tipper that, when it was turned around, it became a writing desk.
And not only the malt tastings and roadshows. Those pamphlets , press anouncements, shop windows, and the Natura magazine (which was published by himself and it was the broadcasting body of the 1st vegetarian association of the time) show the attention Jaime Santiveri paid, by the time, to the difusion of the naturist methods and the promotion of the natural products.
Pioneer techniques like window-dressing in the first Santiveri shops; depth effects and tridimensional figures on the display windows.
What do you think about our advertising Jingle on Malta Natura we broadcasted on the radio?
At that time, we were also in cinemas.
